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With the Iowa Speak Series just around the corner and Iowa STEM Regional Manager, Sarah Derry, visiting William Penn on February 15th the real question is what is STEM all about?

Breanne Garrett, William Penn Mathematics Professor said, "right now the STEM movement consists of getting young students as well as current employees interested in STEM. All four areas combined together. Some of the benefits are being able to problem solve and collaborate and communicate with others. STEM allows us to go across disciplines and see how we can intertwine the subjects and come out with better outcomes.”

STEM is an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the idea is to blend these subjects together and use real world situations to educate students.

Garrett said, “there are a lot of professions that require STEM topics, anything from manufacturing to agricultural to all of the different technologies such as cell phones and applications and things like that.”

Throughout the state, the number of jobs around Iowa for STEM positions are increasing dramatically. According to a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce, STEM jobs are growing three times as fast as non-STEM related jobs and were projected to increase by sixteen percent between 2008 and 2018.

The idea of STEM isn't exactly new to Iowa, but since the governor's push to expand these areas of study in 2011, Iowa has been become one of the leaders with the amount of support given to these programs. For these reasons the number of STEM related programs around the state have taken off in school districts in almost every county.